"And who is paying the expenses now?"
"Ah! that is the reason why I wished to see you as soon as possible. I felt that I could not, without your approval, continue as we are now. The last cheque from Sir Edmund covered all expenses to the end of the year. I have advanced what has been necessary since then, and if you really wish the thing dropped, that is entirely my own affair. But I do most earnestly hope that you will not do anything so wrong. I feel very strongly my responsibility towards Sir David's memory in this matter."
"I feel," said Rose, but her manner was irresolute, "that the scandal has been forgotten by now; things come and go so fast. He will be remembered only as a great soldier who died for his country."
"It may be forgotten," said Mr. Murray in a stern voice she had never heard before. "It may be forgotten in a society which is always needing some new sensation and is always well supplied. But there isa less fluctuating public opinion. We men of business keep a clearer view of character, and we know better how through all classes there is a verdict passed on men that does not pass away in a season. Do you think, madam, that when men treasure a good name it is the gossip of a London season they regard? No; it is the thoughts of other good men in which they wish to live. It is the sympathy of the good that a good man has a right to. I believe in a future life, but I don't imagine I know whether in another world they rejoice or suffer pain by anything that affects their good name here. But I do know, Lady Rose, that deep in our nature is the sense of duty to their memory, and I cannot believe that such an instinct is without meaning or without some actual bearing on departed souls. I don't expect Sir David to visit me in dreams, but I do expect to feel a deep and reasonable self-reproach if I do not try to clear his name."
The heavy features of the solicitor had worked with a good deal of emotion. The thought, the words "departed souls," were no mere words to him in these summer days while Mrs. Murray, Junior, was supposed to be doing well after an operation in a nursing home, and the doctors were inclined to speak of next month's progress and on that of the month after that, and to be silent as to any dates far ahead. In his professional hours he did not dwell on these things, but it was the actual spiritual conditions of the life he and his wife were leading that gave a strange force to his words.
"She never loved him," thought Mr. Murray as he looked out of the window. He was on the same side of the writing-table that he had been on when he hadfirst told her of the deep insult offered to her by Sir David. He did not realise now the intensity of the contempt he had felt then for the departed General as he looked at his photograph. It was intolerable, he had thought then, that a man should have those large, full eyes, that straight, manly look and bearing, who had gone to his grave having deliberately planned that his dead hand should so deeply wound a defenceless woman, and that woman his sweet, young wife. Murray's mind was so full now of relief at the idea that Sir David had done his best at the last, that in his relief he almost forgot that, in a woman's mind the main fact might still be that there had been a Madame Danterre in the case!
But Rose now, as when he had first told her of Madame Danterre's existence, was seeking with a single eye to find the truth. It had seemed to her then a moral impossibility to believe that her husband had meant to leave this horrible insult to their married life. David had been incapable of anything so monstrous; he had not in his character even the courage of such a crime.
But now the key to the situation, according to Mr. Murray, was Molly; and Rose again brought to bear all that she had of perception, of experience, of instinct, to see her way clearly. She was silent; then at last she looked up.
"Mr. Murray, Miss Dexter could not commit such a crime. Why, I know her; I spent some days in a country house with her. I know her quite well, and I don't like her very much, but she really can't have done anything of the kind, and therefore, the case won't be proved. I am sure it won't. And if it fails only harm will be done to David's memory, not good."
"That is what Sir Edmund said, but believe me, Lady Rose, you have neither of you anything to go upon. You think it impossible, but you don't either of you see the immense force of the temptation. Some crimes may need a villainous nature. This, if you could see it truly, only needs one that is human under temptation, ignorant of danger, and ambitious."
"But then, was that why Edmund would have nothing more to do with the case?" thought Rose.
The look of clear, earnest, searching in Rose's eyes was clouded by a frown.
The clock struck twelve. Mr. Murray rose.
"I am half an hour late for an appointment. Lady Rose, forgive me; I am an old man, and maybe I take a harsh view of what passes before me. But there is nothing, let me tell you, that alarms me more in the present day than the way in which men and women lose their sense of duty in their sense of sentimental sympathy."
That afternoon Rose was standing by the window in the drawing-room when she became conscious that her gown was quite hot in the burning sun, and, undoubtedly, its soft, grey tone would fade. She drew back and pulled down the blinds.
It was not the first time she had put off her black, for, in the Paris heat, it had become intolerable, and she had certainly enjoyed her visit to an inexpensive but excellent dressmaker, who had produced this grey gown with all its determined simplicity.
Rose looked round at the drawing-room now. The furniture in holland covers was stacked in the middle of the room; the pictures were wrapped in brown paper with large and rather unnecessary white labels printed with "Glass" in red letters. The fire-irons were dressed in something that looked like Jaeger and the tassels of the blinds hung in yellow cambric bags. Rose smiled a little as she recalled how strange and strong an impression a room in such a state had made on her in her childhood. The drawing-room in her London home had seemed incomparably more attractive then than at any other time. Lady Charlton had once brought Rose up to see a dentist on a bright, autumn day. She had not been muchhurt, but it was a great comfort when the visit was over. She and her mother had dinner on two large mutton chops, and some apricot tartlets from a pastry-cook, things ordered by Lady Charlton with a view to giving as little trouble as possible to two able-bodied women who were living on board wages, and both of whom were, in private life, excellent cooks. Lady Charlton was anxious, too, not to give trouble by sending messages, having quite forgotten that there was also a boy who lived in the house. So, after lunch, she had gone out to find a cab for herself, and had left Rose to rest with a book on the big morocco sofa in the dining-room.
Rose had found her way to the drawing-room, and she could see now the half-open shutter and the rich light of the autumn sun turning all the dust of the air to gold in one big shaft of light. The child had never seen the house when the family was away before, and with awestruck, mysterious joy, she had lifted corners of covers and peered under chairs and recognised legs of tables and footstools. Then she had stood up and taken a comprehensive view of the whole of this world of mountains and valleys, precipices and familiar little home corners, all covered in brown holland, like sand instead of grass, all golden lights and soft shadows.
What had there been so very exciting in it—an excitement she could still recall as keenly now? Was it the greatness of the revolution, or surprise at the new order of things? It was such a startling interruption of all the usual relations between the furniture of the house and its human beings. A great London house wrapped up in the old way spoke more of the old order its influence, its importance, than did the house when inhabited, and out of its curl papers. Nothingcould speak more of law and order and care, and the "proper" condition of things, and the self-respect of housemaids, the passing effectiveness of sweeps, and the unobtrusive attentiveness of carpenters! But to the child there had been a glorious sense of loneliness and licence as she danced up and down the broad vacant spaces and jumped over the rolls of Turkey carpets.
Rose envied that child now, with an envy that she hoped was not bitter. It is not because we knew no sorrows in our childhood that we would fain recall it. It is because we now so seldom know one whole hour of its licensed freedom, its absolute liberty in spite of bonds.
A loud door-bell, as it seemed to Rose, sounded through the house as she closed the shutter she had opened when she came in. She knew whose ring it must be, and came quietly downstairs with a little frown.
Edmund Grosse had been shown into the library. The room looked east, and was now deliciously cool after the street. The dark blinds were half-way down, and a little pretence at a breeze was coming in over the burnt turf of the back garden.
Edmund's manner as he met her was as usual, but tinged perhaps with a little irony—very little, but just a flavour of it mingled with the immense friendliness and the wish to serve and help her.
Rose was, to his surprise, almost shy as she came into the room, but in another moment she was herself.
"Mamma has borne the journey splendidly. I've had an excellent account in a long telegram this morning."
But while she told him of their journey and of theirlife in Paris, a rather piteous look came into the blue eyes. Was she not to hear any of Edmund's own news? Was she not to be allowed to show any sympathy? She might not say how she had been thinking of him, dreaming of how nobly he had met his troubles, praying for him in Notre Dame des Victories. She saw at once that she must not; there was something changed. It was too odd, but she was afraid of him. She shook herself and determined not to be silly. She would venture to say what she wished.
"Are things——" she began, but her voice trembled a little as, raising her head, she saw that he was watching her. "Are things as bad as you feared?"
He at once looked out of the window.
"Quite as bad as possible. I am just holding out till I can get some work. Long ago, soon after I left the Foreign Office, I was asked to do some informal work in Egypt; they wanted a semi-official go-between for a time. I wish I had not refused then; I have been an ass throughout. If I had even done occasional jobs they would have had some excuses for putting me in somewhere now on the ground of my having had experience. I have just written two articles on an Indian question, for I know that part of the world as well as anybody over here, and they may lead to something. Meanwhile, I am very well, so don't waste sympathy on me, I am lodging with the Tarts, where everything is in apple-pie order."
"Oh, I am glad you are with those nice Tarts!" cried Rose, with genuine womanly relief, that in another class of life would have found form and expression in some such remark as that she knew Mary Tart would keep things clean and comfortable, and would do the airing thoroughly.
Edmund's voice alone had made sympathy impossible, but he was a little annoyed at the cheerful tone of Rose's words about the Tarts. It was unlikely that she could have satisfied him in any way by speech or by silence as to his own affairs. But why was she so very well dressed? He had got so accustomed to her in soft, shabby black that he was not sure if he liked this Paris frock; the simplicity of it was too clever.
There was silence, and Rose rearranged a bowl of roses her sister had sent her from the country. She chose out a copper-coloured bud and held it towards him, and a certain pleading would creep into her manner as she did so.
Edmund smiled. She was really always the same quite hopeless mixture of soft and hard elements.
"Have you seen Mr. Murray, Junior?" he asked.
"Yes; he came this morning, and I can't conceive what to do. At last I got so dazed with thinking that this afternoon I have tried to forget all about it."
"That will hardly get things settled," said Edmund, rather drily.
Tears came into her eyes, and were forced back by an effort of will. Then she told him quite quietly of Nurse Edith's evidence.
"You mean," he explained, "that there is a copy of the real will leaving everything to you. I can hardly believe it. In fact, I find it harder to believe than when I first guessed at the truth. I suppose it is an effect on the nerves, but now that we are actually proved right I am simply bewildered. It seems almost too good to be true."
Rose was also, it seemed, more dazed than triumphant. He felt it very strange that she hadnot told him the great news as soon as he came into the room.
"What made you say that you could not conceive what to do? There can be no doubt now." He spoke quickly and incisively.
"I cannot see," she said at last, "what is right. Mr. Murray is very positive, and absolutely insists that it is my duty to allow the thing to go on."
"Of course," Edmund interjected.
"But then, if he is mistaken! He really believes that Miss Dexter received the will from Dr. Larrone and has suppressed it."
Edmund got up suddenly, and looked down on her with what she felt to be a stern attention.
"And that," she concluded, looking bravely into the grave eyes bent on her, "I absolutely decline to believe!"
"Of course," said Grosse abruptly, "it's out of the question. It's just like a solicitor—fits his puzzle neatly together and is quite satisfied without seeing the gross absurdity of supposing that such a girl could carry on a huge fraud. A perfectly innocent, fresh, candid girl, brought up in a respectable English country house—the thing is ridiculous!"
He spoke with great feeling; he was more moved than she had seen him for a long time past, perhaps that was why she felt her own enthusiasm for Molly's innocence just a little damped. He sat down again as abruptly as he had risen.
"But it would be madness to drop the whole affair. This evidence of Nurse Edith's is really conclusive; and the only thing I can see to be said on the other side would be that David might have sent the will to Madame Danterre to give her theoption of destroying it. But there is just another possibility, which Murray won't even consider, that Larrone destroyed the will on the journey."
"Do you know," said Rose, with a smile, "I believe it's conceivable that it is in the box, but that she has never opened the box at all! I believe a girl might shrink so much from reading that woman's papers that she might not even open the box."
"No one but a woman would have thought of such a possibility, but I daresay you are right."
He looked at her more gently, with more pleasure, and she instantly felt brighter.
"Then don't you think it would be possible to get at some plan, some arrangement with her? It seems to me," she went on earnestly, "that we ought to try to do it privately. Perhaps we might offer her the allowance that would have been made to her mother. If she could be convinced herself that the fortune is not really hers she might give it up without all the horrid shame and publicity of a trial."
"Yes, but the scandal was public, and you have to think of David's good name."
"Yes; but then you see, Edmund, the true will would be proved publicly, and the explanation of the delay would be that it had not been found before."
"She would have to expose her wretched mother."
"Not more than the trial would expose her; whether we won the case or lost it, Madame Danterre must be exposed. But if I am right how could it be done?"
"I think I had better do it myself," said Edmund. "I could see Miss Dexter. I really think I could do it, feeling my way, of course."
Rose did not answer. She locked her fingers tightly together as something inarticulate and shapeless struggled in her mind and in her heart. She had no right, no claim, she thought earnestly, trying to keep calm and at peace in her innermost soul. But she did not then or afterwards allow to herself what she meant by "right" or by "claim."
She looked up a moment later with a bright smile.
"Yes," she said, "you would be the best—far the best. Miss Dexter would feel more at her ease with you than with me or anyone I can think of."
"Of course, I must consult Murray first," said Edmund, absorbed in the thought of the proposed interview. "I ought to go now; I have an appointment at the Foreign Office—probably as futile as any of my efforts hitherto when looking for work."
He spoke the last words rather to himself than to his cousin, and then left her alone. He did not question as he walked through the streets across the park whether he had been as full of sympathy to Rose as he had ever been; he was far too much accustomed to his own constancy to question it now. But somehow his consciousness of Rose's presence had not been as apparent as usual. No half ironic, half tender comments on her attitude at this crisis had escaped him. He had been more business-like than usual, and, man-like, he did not know it.
Canon Nicholls had had a hard fight with a naturally hot temper, and his servant would have given him a very fair character on that point if he had been applied to. But there came a stifling July morning when nothing could please him. He had been out to dinner the night before, and it was the man's opinion that he had "eaten something too good for him." He had been to church early, and had come back without the light in his face he usually brought with him, as if the radiance from the sanctuary lamp loved to linger on the blind face. He was difficult all the rest of the morning, and the kind, patient woman who read aloud to him and wrote his letters became nervous and diffident, thinking it was her own fault.
In the afternoon he usually took a stroll with his servant for guide, and then had a doze, after which he went to Benediction at a neighbouring convent. But to-day he settled into his arm-chair, and said he meant to stay there, and that he wanted nothing, and (with more emphasis) nobody.
He was, in truth, greatly disturbed in his mind. He had heard things he did not like to hear of Mark Molyneux. He had been quite prepared for somejealousy and some criticism of the young man he loved. Nobody charms everybody, and if anybody charms many bodies, then the rest of the bodies, who are not charmed, become surprised and critical, if not hostile. It is so among all sets of human beings: the Canon was no acrid critic of religious persons, only he had always found them to be quite human.
The immediate cause of the acute trouble the Canon was going through to-day had been a visit of the day before from Mrs. Delaport Green. Adela, who, as he had once told Mark, sometimes looked in for a few minutes, was under the impression that she very often called on the old blind priest, and often mentioned her little attempts to cheer him up with great complacence, especially to her Roman Catholic friends, as if she were a constant ray of light in his darkness. She had not seen him since her return from Cairo, but her first words were:
"I was so sorry not to be able to come last week," spoken with the air of a weekly visitor.
But the Canon thought it so kind of her to come at all that he was no critic of details in her regard.
She had cantered with a light hand over all sorts of subjects,—Westminster Cathedral, the reunion of Churches, her own Catholic tendencies, her charities, the newest play (which she described well), and her anxiety because her husband ate too much. Then, at last, she lighted on Mark's sermons.
Canon Nicholls spoke with reserve of Mark; he was shy of betraying his own affection for him.
"Yes; it is young eloquence, fresh and quite genuine," he said in response to Adela's enthusiasm.
"It sounds so very real," said Adela, with a sigh. "One couldn't imagine, you know, that he could haveany doubts, or that he could be sorry, or disappointed, or anything of that sort—and yet——"
"And yet, what?" asked the Canon.
"And yet—well, I know I am foolish, and I do idealise people and make up heroes—I know I do! It is such a pleasure to admire people, isn't it? And after he gave up being heir to Groombridge Castle! I was staying there when poor, dear Lord Groombridge got the news of his ordination, and it was all so sad and so beautiful, and now I can't bear to think that Father Molyneux is sorry already that he gave it all up."
"Sorry that he gave it up—!"
Adela gave a little jump in her chair. It made her so nervous to see a blind man excited. But curiosity was strong within her.
"I am afraid it is quite true; a friend of mine who knows him quite well, told me."
"Told youwhat?"
"That he was unhappy, and has doubts or troubles of some kind. I didn't understand what exactly, but she knows that he will give it all up—the vows and all that, I mean—if——"
"If what?"
Adela was not really wanting in courage.
"If a certain very rich woman would marry him. It seems such a come-down, so very dull and dreadful, doesn't it?"
"You know all that's a lie!"
"Well, it was all told to me."
"But you knew there was not a word of truth in it, only you wanted to see how I would take it. And I thought you were a kind-hearted woman! How blind I am!"
Adela was galled to the quick. A quarrel, a scolding, would have been tolerable, and perhaps exciting, but this naïve disappointment in herself, this judgment from the man to whom she had been so good, was too much!
"I thought it was much more kind to let you know what everybody is saying, that you might help him. I am very sorry I have made a mistake, and that I must be going now. It is much later than I thought."
"Must you?" There was the faintest sarcasm in the very polite tone of the Canon's voice.
Nor had this conversation been all; for out at dinner that night the Canon had been worried with much the same story from a totally different quarter. It was after the ladies had left the dining-room, and the gossip had been rougher.
He gave all his thoughts to brooding over the matter next day. Mark could not have managed well—must have done or said something stupid, and made enemies, he reflected gloomily.
Canon Nicholls had been young once, and almost as popular a preacher as Mark, and he did not underrate the difficulties. But it was his firm persuasion that, with tact and common-sense they were by no means insurmountable. What really distressed the old man was that perhaps Mark had been right in thinking that he personally could not surmount them. And it was Canon Nicholls's doing that he was not by this time a novice in a Carthusian Monastery! Therefore the Canon's soul was heavy with anxiety as to whether he had made a great mistake.
"He must be a fool, or else it's just possible that he has got an uncommonly clever enemy."The last thought revived the old man a little, and he received his tea without any of the demonstrations of disgust he had shown on drinking his coffee at breakfast.
Presently the subject of his thoughts came upon the scene, and the visitor saw at once that his old friend was unlike himself. The Canon was exceedingly alert from the moment Mark came into the room, trying to catch up the faintest indication, in his voice or movements, as to whether he were in good or low spirits; he almost thought he heard a quick sigh as Mark sat down. He could not see that Mark was undeniably thinner and paler than he had been only a few weeks ago, and that his eyes looked even more bright and keen in consequence.
"Take some tea," said the Canon; and then, when he had given him time to drink his tea, he turned on him abruptly.
"I've heard some lies about you, and I'm going to tell you what they are."
"Perhaps it's better to be ignorant."
"No, it's not, now why did you incite young men to Socialism in South London?"
"Good heavens!" said Mark. "Well, you shall catch it for that. I will read you every word of that paper; not a line of anything else shall you hear till you've been obliged to give your 'nihil obstat' to 'True and False Socialism,' by your humble servant."
"But that's not the worst that's said of you."
"Oh, no! I know that."
Perhaps if Canon Nicholls could have seen the strained look on the young face he could have understood. As it was, he believed him to be taking the matter too lightly.
"When I was young," he said, "I thought it my own fault if I made enemies, and you know where there is a great deal of smoke there has generally been some fire."
"Then you mean to say," answered Mark, in a voice that was hard from the effort at self-control, "that you think it is my fault that lies are told against me, although youdocall them lies?"
"Frankly, I think you must have been careless," said the old man, leaning forward and grasping the arm of his chair. "I think you must have had too much disregard for appearances."
He paused, and there was a silence of several moments, while the ticking of the clock was quite loud in the little room.
"Unless this is the doing of an enemy," said Canon Nicholls.
"I do not know that it is an enemy," said Mark, "but I know there is some one who is excessively angry and excessively afraid because I know a secret of great importance."
"And that person is a woman, I suppose?"
"I cannot answer that," said Mark. He was standing now with one elbow on the end of the chimney-piece, and his head resting on his right hand, looking down at the worn rug at his feet.
"Will you tell me exactly what it is they do say?" said Mark, still speaking with an effort at cheerfulness that aggravated the nervous state of Canon Nicholls.
And there followed another silence, during which Father Molyneux realised to himself with fear and almost horror that he was nearly having a quarrel with the friend he loved so much, and on whose kindness he had always counted, and whose wisdom had so oftenbeen his guide. He was suffering already almost more than he owned to himself, and he had come into the room of the holy, blind old man as to a place of refuge. It gave him a sick feeling of misery and helplessness that there seemed in the midst of his other troubles the possibility of a quarrel with Canon Nicholls. This at least he must prevent; and so, leaning forward, he said very gently:
"Do tell me a little bit more of what you mean? I know you are speaking as my friend, and, believe me, I am not ungrateful. I am sure there is a definite story against me. I wish you would call a spade a spade quite openly."
"They have got hold of a story that you are tired of poverty and the priesthood, and so on, and that you will give it all up if you can persuade a certain very rich woman to marry you."
"That is definite enough." Mark was struggling to speak without bitterness. "And, for a moment, you thought——?" he could not finish the sentence.
"Good God! not for a fraction of a second. How can you?"
"Oh! forgive me, forgive me; I didn't mean it."
Mark knelt down by the chair, tears were flowing from the blind eyes. Canon Nicholls belonged to a generation whose emotions were kept under stern control; the tears would have come more naturally from Mark. There was a strange contrast between the academic figure of the old man in its reserved and negative bearing, seriously annoyed with himself for betraying the suffering he was enduring, and yet unable to check the flow of tears, and the eager, unreserved, sympathetic attitude of the younger man. After afew moments of silence Mark rose and began to speak in low, quick accents——
"It is a secret which is doing infinite harm to a soul made for good things, and yet it is a secret which I can tell no one, not even you—at least, so I am convinced. But it is a secret by which people are suffering. The result is that I cannot deal with this calumny as I should deal with it if I were free; and I believe that I have not got to the worst of it yet. I see what it must lead to."
He looked down wistfully for a moment, and then went on:
"Last year I had a dream that was full of joy and peace, and that seemed to me God's Will; but, through you, I came to see that I must give it up, and I threw myself into the life here with all my heart. And now, just when I had begun to feel that I was really doing a little good, now that I have got friends among the poor whom I love to see and help, I shall be sent away more or less under a cloud. I shall lose friends whom I love, and whom it had seemed to me that I was called to help even at the risk of my own soul. However, there it is. If I am not to be a Carthusian, if I am not to work for sinners in London, I suppose some other sphere of action will be found for me. I must leave it to Him Who knows best."
Canon Nicholls bent forward, and held out his long, white hands with an eager gesture, as though he were wrestling with his infirmity in his great longing to gain an outlook which would enable him to read a little further into the souls of men.
"I cannot explain more definitely. It is a case of fighting for a soul, or rather fighting with a soul againstthe devil in a terrible crisis. I don't know what to compare it to. Perhaps it is like performing a surgical operation while the patient is scratching your eyes out. If I can leave my own point of view out of sight for the present I can be of use, but I must let the scratching out of my eyes go on."
Mark went to the church early that evening, as it was his turn to be in the confessional. One or two people came to confession, and then the church seemed to be empty. He knelt down to his prayers and soon became absorbed. To-night he was oppressed in a new way by the sins, the temptations, and the unutterable weakness of man; his failures; his uselessness. Nothing else in Art had ever impressed him so much as the figure of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. That beautiful figure, with all the freshness of its primal grace, stretching out its arms from a new-born world towards the infinite Creator, had expressed, with extraordinary pathos, the weakness, the failure, almost the non-existence of what is finite. "I Am Who Am" thundered Almighty Power, and how little, how helpless, was man!
And then, as Mark, weary with the misery of human life, almost repined at the littleness of it all, he felt rebuked. Could anything be little that was so loved of God? If the primal truth, if Purity Itself and Love Itself could make so amazing a courtship of the human soul, how dared anyone despise what was so honoured of the King? No, under all the self-seeking, the impure motives, the horrid cruelties of life, he must never lose sight of the delicate loveliness, the pathetic aspiration, the exquisite powers of love that are never completely extinguished. He must see with God's eyes, if he were to do God's work. Andin the thought that it was, after all, God's work and not his own, Mark found comfort. He had come into the church feeling the burden on his shoulders very hard to bear, and now he made the discovery that it was not he who was carrying it at all; he only appeared to have it laid upon him while Another bore it for him.
Two excellent and cheerful old persons were engaged in conversation on the subject of Father Molyneux. The Vicar-General of the diocese, a Monsignor of the higher, or pontifical rank, had called to see the Rector of Mark's church, and had already rapidly discussed other matters of varying importance when he said, leaning back in an old and faded leather chair:
"What's all this about young Molyneux?"
Both men were fairly advanced in years and old for their age, for they had both worked hard and constantly for many years on the mission. They had to be up early and to bed late, with the short night frequently interrupted by sick calls, and on a Sunday morning they had always fasted till one o'clock, and usually preached two or even three times on the same day. They had never known for very many years what it was to be without serious anxiety on the matter of finance. Their lives had been models of amazing regularity and self-control. Their recreations consisted chiefly in dining with each other at mid-day on Mondays, and spending the afternoon with whist and music. Probably, too, they had dined with a leading parishioner once or twice in the week.
In politics they were mildly Liberal, more warmly Home Rulers, but they put above all the interests of the Church. They were, too, fierce partisans on the controversies about Church music, and had a zeal for the beauty and order of their respective churches that was admirable in its minuteness and its perseverance. They both had a large circle of friends with whom they rejoiced at annual festivities at their Colleges, and with whom they habitually and freely censured their immediate authorities. Those who were warmest in their devotion to the Vatican were often the most inclined to make a scapegoat of a mere bishop. But now one of these two old friends had been made Vicar-General of the diocese, and it was likely that the Rector would speak to him with less than his usual freedom. Lastly, both men had that air of complete knowledge of life which comes with the habits of a circle of people who know each other intimately. And neither of them realised in the least that the minds of the educated laity were a shut book to them.
"Well," said the Rector, and after puffing at his pipe he went on, "we can hardly get into the church for the crowd, and I am going to put up a notice to ask ladies to wear small hats—toques; isn't that what they call them?"
"I heard him once," said the Vicar-General, "and, to tell the truth, it didn't seem up to much."
"Words," said the Rector; "it's Oxford all over. There must be a new word for everything. Why, he preached on Our Lady the other day, and I declare I don't think there were three sentences I'd ever heard before! And on Our Lady, too! A man must be gone on novelty who wants to find anything new to say about Our Lady."
"It doesn't warm me up a bit, that sort of thing," said the Vicar-General. "I like to hear the things I've heard all my life."
"Of course," responded the other, "but you won't get that from our popular preachers, I can tell you," and he laughed with some sarcasm.
"Is he making converts?"
"Too many, far too many; that's just what I complain of. We shall have a nice name for relapses here if it goes on like this."
Both men paused.
"You've nothing more to complain of?" asked the Monsignor.
"No—no—" The second "no" was drawn out to its full length. "Of course, he's unpunctual, and he's often late for dinner. I don't know where he gets his dinner at all sometimes. And there are always ladies coming to see him. If there are two in the parlour and another in the dining-room, and a young man on the stairs, it's for ever Father Molyneux they are asking for. And, of course, he has too much money given him for the poor, and we have double the beggars we had last year."
"But," said the other, "you know there's more being said than all that. There's an unpleasant story, and it's about that I want to ask you. Well—the same sort of thing as poor Nobbs; you'll remember Nobbs?"
"Remember Nobbs! Why, I was curate with him when I first left the seminary. Now, there was a preacher, if you like! But it turned his head completely. Poor, wretched Nobbs! It's a dangerous thing to preach too well, I'm certain of that."
"Well, it's a danger you and I have been spared," said the Monsignor, and they both laughed heartily.
Then they got back to the point.
"Well," said the Rector, "there's a lady comes here sometimes who spoke to me about this the other day. It seems she went to see John Nicholls, and the poor old blind fellow bit her head off, but she thought she ought to tell somebody who might put a stop to the talk, and so she came to me. There's some woman, a very rich Protestant, who gives out openly that she is waiting till Molyneux announces that he doesn't believe in the Church, and then they will marry and go to America. Then, another day Jim Dixon came along, and a friend of his had heard the tale from some Army man at his Club. It's exactly the way things went on about Nobbs, you know, beginning with talk like that. Really, if it wasn't for having seen Nobbs go down hill I shouldn't think anything of it. Young Molyneux is all straight so far, but so was Nobbs straight at first."
"A priest shouldn't be talked about," said the Monsignor.
"Of course not," said the Rector.
"He has started too young," the Monsignor went on, not unkindly; "it's all come on in such a hurry; he ought to have had a country mission first. But my predecessor thought he'd be so safe with you."
"But how can I help it?" asked the other hotly; "I'm sure I've done my best! You can ask him if I haven't warned him from his very first sermon that he'd be a popular preacher. I've even tried to teach him to preach. I've lent him Challoner, and Hay, and Wiseman, and tried to get him out of his Oxford notions, but he's no sooner in the pulpit than he's off at a hard gallop—three hundred words to a minute, and such words!—'vitality,' 'personality,' 'development,' 'recrudescence,' 'mentality'—the Lord knows what! And there they sit and gaze at him with their mouths open drinking it in as if they'd been starved! No, no; it won't be my fault if he turns out another Nobbs—poor, miserable old Nobbs! Now his really were sermons!"
"Well," said the other, in a business-like tone, "I am inclined to think it would be best for him to take a country mission for a few years. I've no doubt he is on the square now, and that will give him time to quiet down a bit. He'll be an older and a wiser man after that, and he could do some sound, theological reading. Lord Lofton has been asking for a chaplain, and we must send him a gentleman. I could tell him that Molyneux had been a little overworked in London, and if he goes down to the Towers at the end of July, no one will suppose he is leaving for good, eh?"
"Very well," answered the Rector; "I don't want anything said against him, you know. I've had many a curate not half as ready to work as this man."
"No, no; I quite understand. Well, I'll write to him in the course of the week. And now about this point of plain chant?" And both men forgot the existence of Mark as they waxed hot on melodious questions.
I can't believe that Jonathan loved David more than the second curate had come to love Mark Molyneux in their work together. It is good to bear the yoke in youth, and it is very good to have a hero worship for your yoke fellow. Father Jack Marny was a young Kelt, blue-eyed, straight-limbed, fair-haired, and very fair of soul. He would have toldany sympathetic listener that he owed everything to Mark—zeal for souls, habits of self-denial, a new view of life, even enjoyment of pictures and of Browning, as well as interest in social science. All this was gross exaggeration, but in him it was quite truthful, for he really thought so. He had the run of Mark's room, and they took turns to smoke in each other's bedrooms, so as to take turns in bearing the rector's observations on the smell of smoke on the upstairs landing. Father Marny had a subscription at Mudie's—his only extravagance—and he always ordered the books he thought Mark wished for, and Mark always ordered from the London library the books he thought would most interest Jack. Father Marny revelled in secret in the thought of all that might have belonged to Mark, and he possessed, of course most carefully concealed, a wonderful old print he had picked up on a counter, of Groombridge Castle, exalting the round towers to a preposterous height, while in the foreground strolled ladies in vast hoops, and some animals intended apparently for either cows or sheep according to the fancy of the purchaser.
But what each of the curates loved best was the goodness he discerned in the other, and the more intimate they became the more goodness they discerned. The very genuinely good see good, and provoke good by seeing it, and reflect it back again, as two looking-glasses opposite to each other repeat each other's lightad infinitum.
It was a Monday, and the rector had gone out to dinner, and the two young men were smoking in the general sitting-room. Father Marny was looking over the accounts of a boot club, and objurating the handwriting of the lady who kept them. Mark was in theabsolutely passive state to which some hard-working people can reduce themselves; he had hardly the energy to smoke. A loud knock produced no effect upon him.
"Lazy brute!" murmured Father Marny, in his affectionate, clear voice, "can't even fetch the letters." And a moment later he went for them himself, and having flung a dozen letters over his companion's shoulder, went back to the accounts.
Ten minutes later he looked up, and gave a little start. He was quick to see any change in Mark, and he did not like his attitude. He did not know till that moment how anxious he had been as to the possibility of some change. He moved quickly forward and stood in front of the deep chair in which Mark was sitting, leaning forward with his eyes fixed on the carpet.
"Bad news?" he asked abruptly.
"Bad enough," said Mark, and, very slowly raising his head, he gave a smile that was the worst part of all the look on his face. Jack Marny put one hand on his shoulder, and a woman's touch could not have been lighter.
"It's not——?" he said, and then stopped.
"Yes, it is," Mark answered. "I am to be a domestic chaplain to that pious old ass, Lord Lofton. It seems I need quiet for study—quiet to rot in! My God! is that how I am to work for souls?"
It was, perhaps, better for Mark that Jack Marny broke down completely at the news, for, by the time he had been forced into telling his friend that it was preposterous to suppose that any man was necessary for God's work, and that if they had faith at all they must believe that God allowed this to happen, lightbegan to dawn in his own mind. But he was almost frightened at the passionate resentment of the Kelt; he saw there was serious danger of some outbreak on his part against the authorities.
"They won't catch me staying here after you are gone!"
"Much good that would do me," said Mark. "I should get all the blame."
"They must learn that we are not slaves!" thundered the curate, his fair face absolutely black with wrath.
"We are God's slaves," said Mark, in a low voice, and then there was silence between them for the space of half an hour.
The door opened and a shrill voice cried out, "There's Tom Turner at the door asking for Father Mark," and the door was banged to again.
Tom Turner was the very flower of Mark's converts to a good life.
Father Marny groaned at the name.
"Let me see him," he said. "Go out and get a walk."
"I'd rather see him; I don't know how much oftener——"
The sentence was not finished. He had left the room in two strides.
The more Edmund reflected on the matter the more difficult he found it to decide what steps to take in order to approach Molly. In the first impulse he had thought only that here was the chance of serving her, of proving her friend in difficulty, which he had particularly wished for. It would make reparation for the past—a past he keenly defended in his own mind as he had defended it to Molly herself, but yet a past that he would wish to make fully satisfactory by reparation for what he would not confess to have been blameworthy. But when he tried to realise exactly what he should have to tell Molly it seemed impossible. For how could he meet her questions; her indignant protests? She would become more and more indignant at the plot that had been carried on against her, a plot which Edmund had started and had carried on until quite lately, and which had also until quite lately been entirely financed by him. Even if he baffled her questions, his consciousness of the facts would make it too desperately difficult a task for him to assume therôleof Molly's disinterested friend now, although in truth he felt as such, and would have done and suffered much to help her.
Edmund had by nature a considerable sympathywith success, with pluck, with men or women who did things well. There are so many bunglers in life, so few efficient characters, and he felt Molly to be entirely efficient. Even the over-emphasis of wealth in the setting of her life had been effective; it fitted too well into what the modern world wanted to be out of proportion. A thing that succeeded so very well could hardly be bad form. Hesitation, weakness, would have made it vulgar; hesitation and weakness in past days had often made vulgar emphasis on rank and power, but in the hands of the strong such emphasis had always been effective and fitting. There was a kind of artistic regret in Edmund's mind at the thought that this excellent comedy of life as played by Molly should be destroyed. And he had come to think it certainly would be destroyed.
One last piece of evidence had convinced him more than any other.
Nurse Edith had a taste for the dramatic, and enjoyed gradual developments. Therefore she had kept back as abonne bouche, to be served up as an apparent after-thought, a certain half sheet of paper which she had preserved carefully in her pocket-book since the night on which she had made the copy of Sir David Bright's will. It was the actual postscript to Sir David's long letter to Rose; the long letter Nurse Edith had put back in the box and which had remained there untouched until Molly had taken it out. The postscript would not be missed, and might be useful. It was only a few lines to this effect:
"P.S.—I think it better that you should know that I am sending a few words to Madame Danterre to tell her briefly that justice must be done. Also, in case anyone, in spite of my precautions to conceal it, isaware that I possessed the very remarkable diamond ring I mention in this letter, and asks you about it, I wish you to know that I am sending it direct to Madam Danterre in my letter to her. May God forgive me, and, by His Grace, may you do likewise."
The sight of David's handwriting, the astonishing verification of his own first surmise, the vivid memory of Rose unwillingly showing him the letter and the ring and the photograph she supposed to have been intended for herself, had a very powerful effect on Edmund Grosse. The whole story was so clear, so well connected, it seemed impossible to doubt it. Yet he believed in Molly's innocence without an effort. What was there to prove that Madame Danterre had not destroyed the will after Nurse Edith copied it? She had the key and the box within reach, and the dying, again and again, have shown incalculable strength—far greater than was needed in order to get at the will and burn it while a nurse was absent or asleep.
Again, it was to Larrone's interest to destroy that will. They had only Pietrino's persuasion of Larrone's integrity to set against the possibility of his having opened the box on his long journey to England, against the possibility of his having read the will, and destroyed it, before he gave the box to Molly. He would have seen at once not only that his own legacy would be lost, but, what might have more influence with him, he must have seen what a doubtful position he must hold in public opinion if this came to light. He had been the chief friend and adviser of Madame Danterre, who had paid him lavishly for his medical services from her first coming to Florence, and who had made no secret of the legacy he was to receive ather death. He had been with her at the last, and was now actually carrying on her gigantic fraud by taking the box to her daughter. Would it not have been a great temptation to him to destroy the will while he had no fear of discovery rather than put the matter in Molly's hands? Lastly came Rose's subtle feminine suggestion that the will might be in the box but that Molly had never opened it. Some instinct, some secret fear of painful revelations, might easily have made her shrink from any disclosures as to her mother's past. Rose was so often right, and the obvious suggestion, that such a shrinking from knowledge would have been natural to Rose and unnatural to Molly, did not occur to the male mind, always inclined to think of women as mostly alike.
At the same time he was really unwilling to relinquish therôleof intermediary. His thoughts had hardly left the subject since the hour of his talk with Rose, and it was especially absorbing on the day on which Molly was to give a party, to which he was invited—and invited to meet royalty. He decided that he must that evening ask his hostess to give him an appointment for a private talk.
Edmund arrived late at Westmoreland House when the party was in full swing. He paused a moment on the wide marble steps of the well staircase as he saw a familiar face coming across the hall. It was the English Ambassador in Madrid, just arrived home on leave, as Edmund knew. He was a handsome grey-haired man of thin, nervous figure, and he sprang lightly to meet his old friend and put his hand on his arm.
"Grosse!" he cried, "well met." And then, in low, quick tones he added: "What am I going to seeat the top of this ascent? This amazing young woman! What does it mean, eh? I knew the wicked old mother. Tell me, was she really married to David Bright all the time? Was it Enoch Arden the other way up? But we must go on," for other late arrivals were joining them. When they reached the landing the two men stood aside for a moment, for they saw that it was too late for them to be announced. Royalty was going in to supper.
A line of couples was crossing the nearest room, from one within. The great square drawing-room was lit entirely by candles in the sconces that were part of the permanent decoration. But the many lights hardly penetrated into the great depths of the pictures let into the walls. These big, dark canvases by some forgotten Italian of the school of Veronese, gave the room something of the rich gloom of a Venetian palace. Beyond a few stacks of lilies in the corners, Molly had done nothing to relieve its solemn dignity. As she came across it from the opposite corner, the depths of the old pictures were the background to her white figure.
She was bending her head towards the Prince who was taking her down—a tall, fair man with blue eyes and a heavy jaw. Then as she came near the doorway she raised her head and saw Edmund. There was a strange, soft light in her eyes as she looked at him. It was the touch of soul needed to give completeness to her magnificence as a human being. The white girlish figure in that room fitted the past as well as the present. The great women of the past had been splendidly young too, whereas we keep our girls as children, comparatively speaking.
Molly had that combination of youth and experiencewhich gives a special character to beauty. There was no detailed love of fashion in her gorgeous simplicity of attire; there was rather something subtly in keeping with the house itself.
The Prince turned to speak to the Ambassador, and the little procession stopped.
Edmund was more artistic in taste than in temperament, and he was not imaginative. But he could not enjoy the full satisfaction of his fastidious tastes to-night, nor had he his usual facility for speech. He could not bring himself to utter one word to Molly. They stood for that moment close together, looking at each other in a silence that was electric. No wonder that Molly thought his incapacity to speak a wonderful thing; others, too, noticed it.
"What a bearing that girl has! What movement!" cried the Ambassador, as, after greeting the first few couples who passed him, he drew Grosse to a corner and looked at him curiously. But Edmund seemed moonstruck. Then, in a perfunctory voice, he said slowly.
"What is the writing in that picture?"
"Mene Thekel Phares," said his friend. "My dear Grosse! surely you know a picture of the 'Fall of Babylon' when you see it? Now let us go where we shall not be interrupted. Tell me all about this girl with the amazing bearing and big eyes, whom princes delight to honour, and Duchesses to dine with! How did she get dear Rose Bright's money?"
Edmund had never disliked a question more.
"I'll tell you all I know," he said unblushingly, "but not to-night, old fellow. It would take too long."
And to his joy a countess and a beauty seized upon the terribly curious diplomatist and made himtake her down to supper. And they agreed while they supped exquisitely that the real job dear old Grosse ought to be given was that of husband to their hostess.
"But then there is poor Rose Bright."
"Lady Rose Bright would not have him when he was rich," he objected. "No; this will do very nicely. If I am not mistaken (and I'm pretty well read in human eyes), the lady is willing."
After supper there was dancing. Edmund did not dance. He stood in a corner, his tall form a little bent, merely watching, and presently he turned away. He had made up his mind. He would not try to speak to Molly to-night, and he would not ask her for a talk.
She was dancing as he left the room, and he turned half mechanically to watch her. It was always an exquisite pleasure to see her dance. He left her with a curious sense of farewell in his mind. Fate was coming fast, he knew; he could not doubt that for a moment. He was not the man to avert it. No one could avert it. It was part of the tragedy that, pity her as he might, he could not really wish to avert it. He would give no warning. Some other hand must write "Mene Thekel Phares" on the wall of her palace of pleasure and success.
Edmund Grosse declined the task.
Molly danced on in the long gallery between its walls of mirrors and their infinite repetitions of twinkling candles and dancing figures pleasantly confused to the eye by the delicate wreaths of gold foliage that divided their panes. In the immeasurable depths of those reflections the nearest objects melted by endlessrepetition into dim distances, and the present dancing figures might seem to melt into a far past where men and women were dancing also.
Gallery within gallery in that mirrored world, with very little effort of imagination, might become peopled by different generations. As the figures receded in space so they receded in time. Groups of human beings, with all the subtle ease of a decadent civilisation, ceded their place to groups of men and women who moved with more slowness and dignity in the middle distance of those endless reflections. And looking down those avenues of gilded foliage into that fancied past, the old cry might well rise to the lips: "What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!"
But, whether in the foreground of to-day, or in the secrets that the mirrors held of a century before, or in the indistinguishable mist of their greatest depths, wherever the imagination roamed, it found in every group of human beings a woman who was young and beautiful, and yet it could come back to the dancing figure of Molly without any shock of disappointment or disdain.
"But it is daylight!" cried two young men who paused breathless with their partners by the high narrow windows, at the end of the gallery, and they threw back the shutters. The growing dawn mingled with the lights of the decreasing candles, with the infinite repetitions of the mirror, with the soft music of the last valse.
And Molly bore the light perfectly, as the chorus of praise and thanks and "good-nights" of the late stayers echoed round her.
"Not 'good-night' but 'good-bye,'" said a very young girl, looking up at Molly with facile tears rising in her blue eyes. "We go away to-morrow, and this perfect night is the last!"
The more he realised Molly's danger, the more he believed in her innocence—the more anxious Edmund became to find a suitable envoy to approach her from the enemy's side, and one who, if possible, would understand his position.
Like most men who have a repugnance to clerical influence he had a great idea of its power, and a perfect readiness to make use of it. He was delighted when he remembered having met Mark Molyneux at Molly's house. The meeting had not been quite a success, but this he did not remember. Edmund's half-sleepy easy manner had been more cordial, but not quite so good as usual. He was just too conscious of the strangeness of the fact that Edmund Grosse should be talking with a "bon petit curé." He knew Father Molyneux to be Groombridge's cousin, and to have been considered a man of unusual promise at Oxford, but, all the same, whatever he had been, he was a priest now, and Grosse had never quite made up his mind as to his own manner to a priest. He was so practised in dealing with other people, but not with ecclesiastics. He did not in the least realise that the slight condescension and uncertainty in his manner, with all his effort at cordiality, was the outcome of arather deeply-seated antagonism to the claims he conceived all priests to make, in their hearts, on the souls of men. I have known a man, not altogether unlike Edmund Grosse, to cross the street in London rather than pass a priest on the same pavement. Grosse would not have been so foolish as that, but still, it was not surprising that the two men did not get on particularly well. All that Edmund now remembered of this chance meeting was Molly's evidently deep interest in the young priest, and he recalled her saying at the time when she had been much moved by her mother's cruel letter, that she was going to hear Father Molyneux preach that evening. From the avowedly anti-clerical Molly, that meant much.
Edmund knew nothing of the recent talk about Mark, although Mrs. Delaport Green had tried to sigh out some insinuations on the subject in talking to him. Perhaps he was a less receptive listener than of yore, when he had more empty spaces in his mind than he had this year. He received, indeed, a faint impression that Mrs. Delaport Green was sentimentalising over some disappointment she was suffering under acutely with regard to the popular preacher, and had felt her motive to be curiosity to gain information from himself on some point of which he knew nothing. But if he had been more attentive he might have gained enough information to make him hesitate to involve poor Mark in Molly's affairs.
Almost as soon as he had thought of consulting Mark, he proposed the notion to Rose, who was enthusiastic in its support.
It is not necessary to give his letter to Father Molyneux, which had to be long and careful, and was written after consultation with Mr. Murray.
Mr. Murray was quite in favour of an informal interview, and disposed to agree in the choice of Father Molyneux as ambassador. "I am not afraid of your letting Miss Dexter know the strength of our case," he said. "Father Molyneux must judge for himself how far it is wise to frighten Miss Dexter for her own sake. He is, as I understand, to try to persuade her to produce the will, and I suppose he will assume that she does not know of its existence among her mother's papers. This would save her pride, and you might come to terms if she would produce it. If you fail, the next course would be for me to insist on an interview, and to carry things with a high hand. I should say, in effect: 'We are aware that Sir David Bright made a will on his way to Africa, and we can prove that it was sent by mistake to your mother, because we have a witness who saw it in her box. It was in her box when it was handed to Dr. Larrone, and it has been traced, therefore, into your hands. We have a copy of it which we can produce if you have destroyed the original, and, if you have not done so, we can get an order of the court compelling you to produce it. You cannot deny the fact that the will was sent to Madame Danterre by mistake, for you have the letter which accompanied it, and we have the postscript to the letter taken from the box by a witness whom we are prepared to call. Will you produce the box in which, no doubt, the will has escaped your notice, or shall we get the order of the court? The will has, as I have said, been traced into your hands.' I doubt if any woman (at all events one such as you describe Miss Dexter) would resist, and no solicitor whom she consulted, and to whom she told the truth, would advise her to do so—norespectable solicitor, that is to say, and no prudent one."
When Edmund showed Rose his letter to Father Mark she had only one criticism to make. She felt that Edmund took too easily for granted that the priest would be ready to put his finger into so very hot a pie. Father Mark must be appealed to more earnestly to come to the rescue, and less as if it were quite obvious that he would be ready to do so as part of his natural business in life. Edmund agreed to add some sentences at her suggestion.
It is important to realise Mark's state of mind, at the time when this strong, additional trial was to come upon him.
With the full approval of his friend, Canon Nicholls, Mark decided not to take the decree of banishment from London without remonstrance. He was not astonished at the result of the talk against him. That his one great enemy should have poisoned the wells so easily was not very surprising. He could not help knowing that the very keenness and ardour of his friends had produced prejudice against him. There was, among the religious circles in London, a perhaps healthy suspicion of hero worship for popular preachers, and of any indiscreet zeal. The great Religious Orders knew how to deal with life, and it was safer to have an enthusiasm for an Order than for an individual. Seculars were the right people for daily routine and work among the poor, but for a young secular priest to become a bright, particular star was unusual and alarming.
Jealousy is the fault of the best men because it eludes their most vigilant examinations, and, while their energy is taken up with visible enemies, it dressesitself in a complete and dignified disguise and comes out either as discretion or zeal or a love of humility.
Mark saw all this less clearly than did the blind Canon, but he realised it enough not to be surprised at the quick growth of the seed Molly had sown in well-prepared ground.
But the blow he did not expect came from his own rector. He went to him, thinking he would back him up in his efforts to get an explanation of this sudden order, and he was told, between pinches of snuff, that he had much better do as he was bid without making a fuss, and that he was being sent to an excellent berth, which was exactly what he needed. The rector was sorry to lose him certainly, but he thought it was the best possible arrangement for himself. There was something of grunts and sniffs between the short phrases that did not soften them. Mark became speechless with hurt feeling.
It became clearly evident to Canon Nicholls that the rector and one or two of the older priests who had wind of the matter could not see why there should be any fuss about it. Young Molyneux was under no cloud; why should he behave as if it were a disgrace to be chaplain to poor old Lord Lofton? Was he crying out because London would be in such a bad way without him? What the Canon could not get them to see was the effect on public opinion. To send Mark away now was to advertise backbiting until it might become a real scandal. They could not see beyond their own immediate circle; if all the priests knew he was really a good fellow they thought that quite enough. They had a horror of a man making himself talked of outside, but they had no notion of giving him the chance to right himself with the outside world. It was much better that he should go away and be forgotten.
Canon Nicholls had always been of opinion that the secular clergy in England were more hardly treated than the regulars. They were expected to have the absolute detachment of monks, without the support that a Religious Order gives to its subjects. They were given the standards of the cloister in the seminary, and then tumbled out into life in the world. No one in authority seemed anxious not to discourage a young secular priest. To be regular and punctual, to avoid rows, and to keep out of debt were the virtues that naturally appealed to the approval of a harassed bishop. But a zeal that put a man forward and brought him into public notice was likely to be troublesome, and such men were seldom very good at accounts. The type of young man which Mark resembled, according to the priests who discussed the question, was not a popular one among them. As a type it had not been found to wash well.
Canon Nicholls was not popular among them for other reasons, but chiefly because of a biting tongue. He would let his talk flow without tact or diplomacy on these questions, and often did far more harm than good, in consequence. He fairly stormed to one or two of his visitors at the absurdity of hiding a man away because of unjust slander. It was the very moment in which he ought to be brought forward and supported in every way. The fact was that the man was to be sacrificed to the supposed good of the Church, only no one would say so candidly. Whereas, in reality, by justice to the man the Church would be saved from a scandal!
Mark was outwardly very calm, but he was changed.His friends said that his vitality and earnestness were bound to suffer in the struggle for self-repression. His sermons were becoming mechanical tasks and the confessional a weariness. He made his protest, as Canon Nicholls wished, but after the talk with his rector he knew it was useless. He wrapped himself in silence, even with Father Jack Marny. He began, half consciously, to be more self-indulgent in details and the only subject on which he ever showed animation was a projected holiday in Switzerland. He once alluded to the possibility of going to Groombridge for the shooting.